We see the artist is lost in fragments. She sits on bare floorboards, surrounded by shards of broken mirror, cut up poetry and painted [interrupted] images of mandalas. Only the back of her head is visible while she chooses her face. The pieces, of course, could be put together in any number of configurations and… Continue reading Kaleidoscope
Category: Flash
Parallel #6: Fade
Whatever happened to chasing rainbows? Bare-footed stumbles in the dead of night, asphalt and glass and gum. Gazing at stars and laughing till we couldn’t breathe. Exposing their lies. They never knew us. We were the only ones. Nostalgia at the end of the moon. Rows of possible suitors in indigo as deep as it… Continue reading Parallel #6: Fade
Interlude/Bear/Thaw
Serrated teeth in the brain. Tissue melting, oozing like wax, reforming into monstrous masses of indeterminate shape. Painful stalactites that join forces to torment me into complete and final submission. The wind growls as it rolls in through the fog. I flinch, though I can imagine no greater cross than I already bear. It’s the… Continue reading Interlude/Bear/Thaw
Interlude/Desert
I spotted you soaring high above me, your black wings wide like in that stolen poem from years ago. You were looking for an exit in the sky; we’d surely tried everywhere we could reach on foot. Days, maybe weeks, wandering through the desert of the real. Every layer of meaning, sign and recognition stripped,… Continue reading Interlude/Desert
Interlude/Forest
A gunshot rings out through the trees. Run, little one. Run as fast as anyone with dust for bones can possibly run. It hurts like no time has passed, I know. The ricochet never ended, never even reached the other side. Find the waterfall where the shadows crouch and the birds sing. It appears somewhere… Continue reading Interlude/Forest
![Sequence #13: The Sound of Distant Drums [Limerence]](https://crdudleycom.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pine-leaves-gc485878f3_640.jpg?w=640)
Sequence #13: The Sound of Distant Drums [Limerence]
CW: Self-harm, Suicide After an age, the return of Animus B in a dream. He’d taken up snowboarding. I saw him first from way up high as though in an aerial photograph taken through a frozen lens. Cracking but beautiful. Lips. He was alone, maybe for hundreds of miles. He preferred it like that, it… Continue reading Sequence #13: The Sound of Distant Drums [Limerence]
![Journal Sequence #11: Remission [Appending]](https://crdudleycom.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/20220101_112705.jpg?w=640)
Journal Sequence #11: Remission [Appending]
Suddenly, through the cracks in the asphalt, paving and brickwork: water. It’s raining upwards; the city is crying. Drowning me and everyone like me in its tears. My hair, my clothes, my skin: soaked. My eyelashes beaded with droplets. You can only write when you allow the world outside to slow down, because as it… Continue reading Journal Sequence #11: Remission [Appending]
Flash: Machine in the Corner/Claws
I “But is it really so bad?” I almost leapt out of my seat at the sound of the voice, coarse and familiar like a long lost grandmother. It was, of course, my moon-self (as opposed to my sun-self, which I worship most often). Sun-selves are all about action and light and focus. Moon-selves are… Continue reading Flash: Machine in the Corner/Claws
![Journal Sequence #10: Desktop Sunshine [Exit]](https://crdudleycom.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/emergency-exit-g266b71ec9_1280.jpg?w=900)
Journal Sequence #10: Desktop Sunshine [Exit]
Self-indulgence is a dirty word, and yet we are expected to know who we are. Is it feminine to write the personal? Tear everything up, Kafka said in his diary. And I hear him loud. Ash takes my head in his hands. He is naked. I see his tattooed arms and his slick hair. He… Continue reading Journal Sequence #10: Desktop Sunshine [Exit]
Flash Fiction: Metal Box
I’m in a metal box. It’s raining outside, maybe. No one is coming. Not ever. Sleep provides a refuge in which mind becomes one with its habitat. But I must emerge. The jewel is coming. I buzzed her in. Soon she’ll enter between the bars across my window. I selected her from thousands of possibilities.… Continue reading Flash Fiction: Metal Box
C.R. Dudley 